Goodbye Chelsea Thompto

Chelsea Thompto, preparing for Embodying, now at the Sac State Library

The first thing that you notice when you walk into Chelsea Thompto's studio is how it smells. It smells strangely...good.  The delightful perfume of burned wood, chai tea, beeswax, and pine resin, is the pleasant side effect of the simple natural materials that she is using to make her art.  Most studio spaces are more aromatically challenged, mine included.  A cursory look around definitely confirms that a mad scientist is in residence. Experiments abound, her passions transfigured into an assortment of unique and powerful artistic statements.  Nylons tied to Redwood bark spells mysterious and cryptic messages. Rubbings of wood lie in piles.  Even a quick look around piques my curiousity.  Chelsea Thompto's art is definitely some of the most unique and current I've seen in Sacramento.
       I first met Chelsea in a sculpture class. She was the grad student assistant. I was immediately impressed by her suggestions, critique, and competence working with a huge array of materials and tools. But even better, here was another member of the LGBTQ community to talk to about art in a meaningful way.   From our conversations, I felt like I entered new levels of awareness of myself and my own art practice.  Through our conversations I realized I had been ignoring my homosexuality as influence on my work; I had simply come to take it for granted.  Getting to know Chelsea and the issues related to being a Trans-person opened my eyes to just how far we still have to go in the fight for equality.
        As a Trans-person, Chelsea has to deal with much more on a daily basis than most people can even imagine. When you're Trans, discrimination is a day to day reality.  We live in a country that has only recently begun to embrace LGBTQ people. Many gays, like myself, are now fixtures in contemporary mainstream culture. Being gay isn't really a major contemporary topic of conversation anymore; I feel largely accepted, for better and for worse, into the fold. But being a Trans-person is different. Trans people still face opposition and bigotry from a large segment of the US. Case in point, the bathroom law that was recently passed in North Carolina.

anti-Trans propoganda sticker

This reality is transfigured into Chelsea's work.  Her pieces focus on her identity, and how we perceive others and ourselves.  Thompto uses a code, completely of her own device, that acts as a buffer between her art and the viewer. The code, beautiful in it's own right when written, is a complex vehicle for interaction between Thompto and the viewer.  Understanding it requires some time and critical analysis; things we all too often don't make time for anywhere.  Through the cerebral process of decryption, we open ourselves to recognize the love of understanding that is shared by all people. Her work invites us to be a part of the art, where the participant is the critical link in completion of each piece.

Embodying, Chelsea Thompto 2016

       This work has culminated in her current MA show entitled Embodying, currently on display in the Sacramento State Library Gallery.  The show comprehensive, meticulous, striking, and powerful. Those mad scientist experiments culminated in a luminous volume of work that speaks to me on the deepest level. Yes, Chelsea Thompto is making important art.

Power Word: (Trans) written in the code

        But she's leaving. Moving on the get her MFA in Madison, Wisconsin, where she will also be teaching. They will be very lucky to have her. And while her leaving is a blow to hte Sacramento art scene, she has left an indelible mark on me and my art.  Her passionate creativity will be missed, but I am so glad that she will be out there making art.

"Everything in Between" Morehshin Allahyari

The Verge Gallery, S and 7th Streets

Last weekend I made the short trip to the Verge Center for the Arts to see Morehshin Allahyari's exhibition Everything in Between.  The works, collectively a meditation on the specific and complex identity of being an Iranian woman, raises questions about how technology binds us and can simultaneously set us free.

In one portion of the show, Allahyari produces a series of statues from Persian antiquity, that have been reproduced using 3D scanning and printing technology.  The twelve works, entitled Material Speculation: ISIS, are all pieces that were destroyed by ISIS in 2015.  Embedded in each work is a flash drive containing critical archaeological and physical details of each reproduced work of art. These works are make a powerful statement of protest about attempts to distort the past and manipulate culture to fit the conservative Islamic agenda of ISIS.  

Material Speculation: ISIS Morehshin Allahyari 2015-2016

In Mere Spaces All Things Are Side by Side I  2014 -Present

One of the most moving works is a short animated film called In Mere Spaces All Things Are Side by Side I that sets a conversation the artist had on Yahoo Chat with an online pen pal against 3D modeled architecture. Through the dialogue, we gain a poignant insight into the difficulty a person has using the internet in heavily censored Iran.  I remember being a gay teenager in the early 2000's and having the experience here in northern California. I lived in a world where I felt completely cut off and isolated from the world around me. Had it been ten years before, I would have had no online outlet to channel who I really was. I wouldn't have had the validation of chatting with other gay or lesbian people online or even seeing gay pornography that at least allowed me to recognize that I wasn't alone in my feelings. The internet was a form of social salvation.   I believe that Allahyari had a similar experience.

Other works that utilize 3D printing are works of banned images in Iran. This includes dogs (which are banned in Iran and the ownership of which incurs a sentence of 74 lashes), pigs, Buddha, and Homer Simpson.  These works playfully and purposefully create digital assemblages of these banned objects, raising awareness of cumbersome and futile censorship imposed by the Iranian government.  

Dark Matter; First Series 2014

Samara Golden at the YBCA

A Trap in Soft Division, Samara Golden, 2016

Soooo, there was a lot to see at the Yerba Buena Center for the arts. I thought I'd write a bit about what else is currently up. Samara Golden's A Trap in Soft Division is alone worth the visit to the YBCA.  The installation is in a large ballroom with floors covered in pristine mirrors reflecting a series of small staged rooms some 40 feet over head. Each room is complete with everyday objects: furniture, lamps, take out boxes, and open laptops. The rooms are completely enclosed, and while there are similarities between them, none are the exact same.  In each corner rumbles a white noise machine giving the whole room a vague hum that is both soothing and lonely. 

 It feels like we have all the information, but nothing is clear. The space is devoid of life, and we are kept remote. We view the rooms from either the mirrors on the floor, or by craning our necks up.  Viewing the work by looking up or down changes the interpretation.  As one looks down at, it elicits a sense of omnipotent voyeurism. As you look up, it's a surreal topsy-turvy reality that almost causes vertigo. 

View of the floor

Looking up 

The installation is thought provoking, delicate and fascinating work. The clinical compartmentalized nature of the rooms starts to evoke a feeling of cells, no matter how comfortable they appear. The installation is multi-layered and complex and my friend Tracy and I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out what we were feeling. 

 Golden is interested in expressing our increasing isolation in a technology saturated world. As social media brings us closer together online, our physical lives retreat into the safety and insulation of the tiny spaces we can define.  I personally know the feeling of not wanting to leave my house and face the grinding external reality of Sacramento.    

This surreal space and the complex spectrum of emotions that it draws out in a minimal way, is highly inspiring.